Monitoring of the electrical impulses generated by various organs is well known in medicine. For example, electrocardiograms, electro-encephalograms, and other similar patient monitoring methods continue to be important elements in the medical armamentarium for combating disease.
Standard methods for such medical monitoring include the attachment of electrodes to the patient's body adjacent the organ to be monitored. These electrodes are generally connected by wires to an apparatus for recording any detected electrical signals and for displaying those signals in visually perceptible form, such as in a strip chart or in on a display screen. It is easy to appreciate the limitations imposed by the requirement that the electrodes be connected to the apparatus by wires. Patient mobility is severely limited, and the tests must generally be performed in a medical office or similar setting.
To avoid some of these inconveniences, monitoring apparatuses have been developed wherein the patient wears the electrodes connected by wire to a portable recording device which the patient carries usually on a harness, a belt, or some other support. The recording device must be returned to the medical office for downloading and/or reading of the recorded data.
The aforementioned systems are unsuitable for monitoring multiple patients in real time. These prior systems are also not easily adaptable to manual activation by a patient in response to a medical event which should be recorded. Additionally, the old systems are necessarily dependent on cumbersome equipment not easily used directly by the patient.